3- These dudes can draw and they sure talk a lot about their work, but do they really know how to write? Find out what kind of stories the wonder twins ? us ? have to tell that make them so unique. Order your copy of De:TALES right NOW! It is going to run out, and then you can't blame me for not telling you beforehand.

Saturday, May 27, 2006

I wonder what would people think of more Romeo and Kelsie stories, and of more ROCK'n'ROLL goodness. We have been thinking of new stories with these characters, so now would be a nice time for the readers to say what they would like to see.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

The weeks pass and the time for new comics is approaching. De:TALES is scheduled to hit shops in two weeks, and it's supposed to look beautiful as hell. It's the work we're most proud of, and in two weeks people will see why.

Casanova will follow shortly, showing us and the world how fast an artist improves just by working every day on comics. Ba has become an amazing force of nature of an artist, and Casanova is the perfect vessel for his transformation.

We cannot stop. Not now, when stuff is actually happening, or ever. But specially now, we must put our twins heads together and come up with exciting new ideas, new projects, new stories. If we had projects waiting a perfect time to begin, now is the time. As good a time as ever, but now we cannot go back.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

If you CLICK HERE, you can read yet another big interview with Matt Fraction about the soon-to-be-released Casanova, and you'll find out more about each character of the story, about the joys of this kind of story and you can get to the nice part when Matt's compliments the giant skills of the awesome brazilian power that is Gabriel Ba.

Issue three is awesome, by the way.

Plenty of images on the above link, but if you're not satisfied and want some candy right here, than I guess I have just the thing for you.

Ba just finished a cover for a newspaper special here in Brazil, about The Lord of the Rings. There's a double spread inside, but I'll save that for another occasion.

Friday, May 12, 2006

Yes, we should. We can read all the comics we'd like, and there'll always be more, such is the energy behind every creator working (or willing to work) on comics. More than movies or books, comics can reach all corners of the imagination, mixing visual experimentation, creativity control (and decontrol) and artistic freedom.

Should we love comics?

Yes, we should. Comics makes us laugh, Comics makes us cry. We fall in love with characters we want to meet and introduce to our parents. If we create comics, we create experiences that will reach other people and those experiences will become a part of those people's life FOREVER. Even if your story suck, and specially if it doesn't. We're all sharing a world in which we create the rules, we break them, we make people believe they can trust us their hopes.

We're trusting them our dreams.

Should we love comics?

Yes, we should. The stories told are stories lived in everybody's minds. Now we're all friends, we all belong to the same community. Now we only care about the stories we read on comic books, and we forget that the world has such bad writer to come up with so much tragedy, disgrace and greed. Those people never read enough books, enough comic books, to know that all material things will become dirt and vanish after you're gone, and those things won't remember you if they are the things you care about. The only thing worth caring about are our friends and our loved ones and our family. They're the ones worth remembering. They'll remember you. Write for them. Write for yourself. Write for someone to read, instead of writing for someone to buy.

I'm not drawing enough comics. That's the truth. It's kind of sad, actually, but it's how things are right now.

The positive side of this harsh reality is the fact that I'm not drawing shitty comics for money. After the pages were ready and the money got paid (and spent), I would be left with nothing but shitty comics, so I'm glad I'm not doing those right now.

A friend of mine did this character's design and I decided to that a crack at it and do my version of his design. As much as the final drawing was still miles away from good, it was really fun to draw something that was not so "real" and ordinary. I really like to draw strange fantastic stuff, even if it's not what I like to write about.

What do I like to write about?

That's a question I ask myself every time I have to start a story, and since my last efforts at that have been short stories, I tend to get to this starting point more often than not. I guess I'll always ask this question.

And I'll probably spent the rest of my life creating stories to figure out the answer.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

At a certain point, at the beginning of the year, I was going to be the Casanova cover artist, for no other reason than to work with my brother in some way on this project. I love doing covers, if they don't quite turn out the way I wanted. I'm always learning and, sometimes, I have an idea for a cover and don't have the skills to pull it off.

I think the first problem I faced trying to do the cover was the fact that I haven't read the script and, as much as I know most cover artist do not read the actual script, I felt I wasn't really familiar with the story. I had a notion of what the story was about, but had no idea how complex it was, and I chose cool elements from the story for the cover, but they didn't actually had a real importance to the story.

Another problem was a choice of style. Cover art is not internal art, and I really wanted to try something different. I wanted the picture to look like an art poster, like a painting, like a sketchbook drawing, like a movie poster, I don't know, but it shouldn't look to me like a sample from the inside art. That's where I failed completely, as my lack of technique created a hybrid drawing, neither artistic or comic-book like, and certainly not worth of a cover.

The positive note of my tale is, of course, the decision my brother made to do the covers. Seeing how I was not really going anywhere decent with my cover, he decided to do it himself, and do it better - much better. Not trying to be some kind of artist he's not, but still reinventing his art for the covers, he created already three Casanova covers, and they totally rock!

My brother used to say he didn't liked to do covers, and that he didn't know how to make a good cover.

Multiple Eisner Award winners Fábio and Gabriel were born in São Paulo in June 5th, 1976 and have, in one way or another, been telling stories ever since. Now, they tell stories doing comic books and graphic novels (which are essencially the same thing). They are Brazil's very own WONDER TWINS.

This is their english blog. Here, they show some pictures and they talk a little about their behind-the-scenes day-to-day life.